Educational Reform Movement Research Articles

The Impact of Educational Reforms on the Work of the School Principal in the United Arab Emirates

Although much has been written about the complexity of educational change and reform elsewhere, the educational reform movement in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a relatively recent phenomenon with little systematic documentation as yet; educators are still searching for a clear understanding of their roles. However, it is clear that the leadership of the country is exerting great pressure for reform in schools and there is a sense of urgency about the need for large-scale change. This article examines the impact of these reforms on the work of one school principal at this time of radical transformation. It begins with a brief review of some of the specific changes taking place in the emirate of Abu Dhabi including the introduction of a public private partnership model in public schools and a brief discussion of the role of school principals in the management of change. This is followed by a description of the study and the methodological design underpinning it. The findings of the study are presented and discussed and the article concludes with some recommendations for further research.

Do “Education Governors” Matter?

This study examines the role of governors in the P–16 education reform movement through their influence in the adoption of policies creating statewide P–16 councils. Network theory is used to distill three sets of hypotheses to predict how leadership influences of governors, the structure of state educational governance organizations, and environmental characteristics of states may help to explain the spread of voluntary and mandatory P–16 councils from 1992 to 2008. These hypotheses are tested empirically through the use of event history analysis. The results indicate that the presence of an education governor, as well as certain environmental conditions, may affect a state’s decision of both whether to form a P–16 council and the type of P–16 council that is formed.

The Radical Promise of Reformist Zeal: What Makes “Inquiry for Equity” Plausible?

Education reform movements often promise more than they deliver. Why are such promises plausible in light of seemingly perpetual education reform? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork based in a nonprofit education reform organization, this article explores the appeal of popular notions about “using data to close the racial achievement gap.” It focuses on training institutes wherein passionate reformers made complex claims about the power of a program called Inquiry for Equity. It argues that zealous performances of faith in the program raise expectations for social—not just educational—transformation. Because such radical claims cannot be pinned down in either public documents or daily discourse, they elude critical assessment.[education reform, affect, equity, progressive politics, inquiry]

The Manhattanville Music Curriculum Program: 1966–1970

The Manhattanville Music Curriculum Program (MMCP) was a major curriculum reform effort in the United States during the 1960s, a decade characterized by curricular innovation and experimentation. The direct impetus for this unique education reform movement was the 1957 launch of the world's first successful space satellite, Sputnik I, after which education came seen as vital the nation's survival during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. In response this perceived national crisis, for the first time in history the federal government began support public school education, partially by funding large curriculum reform projects. During this period of unprecedented financial support, diverse groups formed alliances and made concerted efforts improve the existing school curricula. MMCP was launched at a time when government involvement and support for arts education had just reached its highest point, in the wake of the Kennedy Administration's interest in and support for the arts and the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965). MMCP received the largest federal grant, before or since, in the field of music curriculum development: a sum of $221,000 from the Arts and Humanities Program (AHP) of the U.S. Office of Education. The founder and director of the project Ronald B. Thomas was a faculty member at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in Purchase, New York. The project brought together prominent musicians, educators, and institutions which put innovative educational ideas into practice. Despite the fact that the MMCP is considered one of the major projects in contemporary American music education history, only one large-scale historical study on the project has been completed. An article on the beginnings of MMCP (1957-1966) based on that larger study has been published. The current paper, the second monograph drawn from the larger study, traces the development of the MMCP from 1966 1970. (1) Chronological Description and Implementation: 1966-70 The primary goal of the MMCP was develop an alternative music curriculum for grades K-12. The objectives of the project, listed in the contract with the U.S. Office of Education, included: (1) to prepare a curriculum guide and related materials designed for the primary through the high school years, all using discovery approaches; (2) to develop a meaningful sequence of basic musical concepts in terms of the children's understanding; and (3) to more closely unify philosophies and directions of all areas and levels of music learning through the development of a spiral-type curriculum. (2) Thomas invited twenty-two expert consultants, including musical performers (seven), music educators (seven), and general educators (eight). The practicing musicians were involved in cutting-edge fields ranging from electronic music jazz. A significant feature of the program was the preponderance of composers, including Lionel Nowak, Henry Brant, Charles Wuorinen, and James Tenney. (3) A prominent music educator, Robert A. Choate of Boston University, directed the program during the months of July and August 1966. Other major figures involved were Edwin E. Gordon and George H. Kyme, both in the area of program assessment, and several curriculum specialists from the field of education. The project also involved thirty-eight school teachers and administrators, called teacher-consultants, for a total of sixty professionals. (4) The new music curriculum was developed in three phases: extensive experimentation through pilot testing, extended pilot testing, and final revisions. (5) Phase One (1966-67): Extensive Experimentation The first formal year of the program began with a five-week summer workshop at Manhattanville College in 1966. This workshop served as a planning and training session for nineteen teachers from the greater New York area. The workshop faculty was Choate, Thomas, Nowak, and Brant. …

Creating confusion or creative evaluation? The use of student evaluation of teaching surveys in Japanese tertiary education

A new reform movement in Japanese tertiary education has emerged which is more economy centered, more market sensitive, and more influenced by a government shift towards decentralization. With the dramatic decline in the 18 year old population, a buyer’s market has led to the introduction of student evaluation of teaching surveys (SETs) partly as a measure student satisfaction. This is not without debate, and this study seeks to understand the perceptions of 22 local and expatriate English language teachers who participated in interviews. They suggest that using SETs as the sole criterion for evaluating teachers is flawed, unsystematic, and does not lead to improvement. Participants suggest the need for a model of “creative evaluation” over the present “creation of confusion.” Teachers are unaware of the purpose of the evaluation which is not explained and often are just expected to administer without any consultation or input into the questions. Evaluation should draw distinction between prescriptive, acontextual summative evaluation and collaborative approaches that show the richness and diversity while giving learners as well as faculty more voice.

Developing students' ability to engage critically with science in the news: identifying elements of the ‘media awareness’ dimension

Worldwide, science education reform movements are stressing the need to promote ‘scientific literacy’ among young people. Increasingly, this is taken to include empowering students to engage critically with science‐related news reporting. Despite this requirement now featuring in statutory curricula throughout the UK, there has, to date, been a dearth of research‐informed advice to assist science teachers as they identify appropriate instructional objectives in this regard and design relevant learning activities through which these might be achieved. In this study, prominent science communication scholars, science journalists, science educators and media educators were interviewed to determine what knowledge, skills and habits of mind they judged valuable for individuals reading science‐related news stories. Teachers of science and of English from nine secondary schools in Northern Ireland addressed the same issue. A striking – and significant – finding of the study was the very substantial number of statements of knowledge, skill and disposition offered by participants that relate to ‘media awareness’, an issue largely overlooked in the science education literature. The school‐focused phase of the research suggests that cross‐curricular approaches involving teachers of science collaborating with those of English/media education or media studies may best serve to address this important curricular goal.

Challenges to the Work Life of Academics: The Experience of a Renowned University in the Chinese Mainland

AbstractUnder the major educational reform movement in the Chinese Mainland, which began in 1985, higher education was considered the most important apparatus for national development. The Ministry of Education initiated ‘Project 985’ to develop two top national universities into world‐class universities. As part of this project to raise educational quality and academic standing, the Ministry of Education carried out a reform of the university personnel system. The reform aimed to launch a new system of employment practices based on performance and contract, with an emphasis on competition and rewards. This research focuses on the severe constraints academics at a sample university in China faced at the state, university and faculty level. First, at the state level, the state directly set the direction of academic research. Second, at the university level, the new employment reform was imposed using a top‐down model. Most academics conformed to it but some employed a ‘double bookkeeping’ strategy. ‘Administrative domination’ also reflected a centralised approach at the university. Third, at the faculty level, a few academic‐administrators held most of the decision making power. Academics urged the university to offer a more supportive environment for conducting genuine scholarship.

Reform, Ideology and the Politics of Waiting for ‘Superman’

In the United States, charter schools have been proclaimed as the potential solution for a host of problems for inner-city education, particularly as a cure-all for marginal achievement scores on high-stakes standardized testing. Several US states and cities (most prominently Texas, New York, Atlanta and Washington, DC) have embraced this neo-liberal vision of educational reform as a ‘miracle’ panacea and injected business-derived principles into schools to much fanfare and few authentic positive results. This article focuses on the rhetoric of market-driven solutions for school reform as exemplified in Davis Guggenheim's 2010 documentary Waiting for ‘Superman’. Contextualizing the film within a milieu of recent reform and ‘miracle’ solutions, the article attempts to highlight the inherent narrative character of the educational reform movement in the United States and its perpetual willingness to ignore previous structural failures in search of new solutions which typically mirror previous innovations in their fictive type.

Inclusive education and best practice for children with autism spectrum disorder: an integrated approach

Many parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have reported general discontent with the services offered by the education system and have advocated for increased ASD‐specific services to better meet their children’s educational needs. The elements of best practice offer an ideal model for educational support. There are, however, limitations to advocating ASD‐specific services. This paper describes how best practice for ASD as an educational model fits within what is described as authentic inclusion. Further, it is suggested that the ASD community align with the greater inclusive education reform movement. With the use of this unified model of education, all children will receive the educational support they require.

Reclaiming the democratic purposes of American higher education: Tracing the trajectory of the civic engagement movement

American colleges and universities have historically sought to promote an enlightened citizenry. In the early 1980s many felt that this civic purpose was in danger of being lost. What unfolded was a widespread educational reform movement aimed at reasserting the public and democratic purpose of American higher education. This article traces the trajectory of this movement and notes a significant emergent tension among movement members - the question of whether to seek broad-based legitimacy within the academy by aligning the efforts with disciplinary norms or to challenge the status quo and attempt to transform higher education and align its efforts with the pressing needs of America's democracy.

Exploring Secondary Science Teachers' Perceptions on the Goals of Earth Science Education in Taiwan

The educational reform movement since the 1990s has led the secondary earth science curriculum in Taiwan into a stage of reshaping. The present study investigated secondary earth science teachers' perceptions on the Goals of Earth Science Education (GESE). The GESE should express the statements of philosophy and purpose toward which educators direct their attention, and provide the visions or broad aims that earth science education is designed to achieve. Based on this rationale, the purpose of this study was to explore teachers' perceptions on the GESE at secondary school level (Grades 7–12) in Taiwan. A national survey of 1,000 earth science teachers was conducted in May 2004, with a response rate of 70.2%. The results revealed that ‘Students acquire basic earth science concepts’ is the most important GESE both in teachers' preferred goal and their actual teaching practice in the secondary earth science education; that there is a major gap between teachers' preferred and actual GESE in terms of ‘Preparing students for the entrance examinations’; and that the differences between teachers' preferred and actual GESE are contingent on the teachers' age, the school size, and the teacher education background of teachers.

Eclecticism and the Technologies of Discernment in Pietist Pedagogy

Eclecticism and the Technologies of Discernment in Pietist Pedagogy Kelly J. Whitmer While the Franckesche Stiftungen (the Francke Foundations) of Halle/Saale are perhaps best known today as the institutional centre of German Pietism, throughout much of the eighteenth century they were widely regarded as a pedagogically innovative Schulstadt (or city of schools). The founder of this Schulstadt, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), was many things to many people: Pietist, radical Lutheran, theologian, pedagogue, professor of Greek and Oriental languages, preacher, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and proponent of a Protestant mission. Like most participants in what was initially a grassroots movement oriented around the personality of Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), a minister active in Frankfurt am Main around 1670 who sought to breathe new life into the Lutheran church,2 Francke rarely referred to himself as a Pietist. From his post at the University of Halle (founded in 1694), this Spenerian prote´gé set out to create a new "universal seminar" that would make the assimilation of many diverse points of view, identities, and competing strands of knowledge its [End Page 545] defining mandate. "My purpose," Francke wrote in a letter to a Pastor Ring from Grünebartau (October 29, 1712), "is to develop a universal institution, useful for bringing into a good and holy order all that is important for the Christianity of all orders of society and relates, in some way, to the healing power of the soul."3 His Schulstadt would "bring into order" a myriad of relationships around a single point and relied, quite deliberately I propose, on an eclectic methodology to do this. In recent years, the relationship of Francke's Schulstadt to the implementation of Brandenburg-Prussia's first compulsory schooling system and teacher training institutes has been better documented than in the past.4 Scholars of education have paid closer attention to the methodological innovations of Pietist pedagogy, and its points of convergence with the ideas of John Locke (1632–1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) have become subjects of mounting interest.5 Francke's significance for the history of education has been assessed mainly in terms of his ability to realize the pedagogically inclined reform projects of seventeenth-century figures, such as Johann Amos Comenius (1592–1670).6 We know that the thousands of children who participated in the life of the Schulstadt very often left Halle to become actively involved as teachers and ministers throughout the German states. Several played pivotal roles in the development of the late eighteenth-century educational reform movement known as Philanthropismus and its associated practices and institutions.7 [End Page 546] Perhaps the most striking feature of Francke's Schulstadt was its curriculum, which featured innovative training regimens in applied mathematics for children from diverse social backgrounds.8 The scale and rigor of these programs were to be found nowhere else at the time and can be linked to the overtly pedagogical mandate of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (f. 1701). These regimens deliberately juxtaposed artisanal and learned knowledge and stressed the importance of the eye as a conciliatory medium.9 Despite having acquired largely anti-empiricist reputations over the years due to their lingering interest in alchemy and their roles in securing the banishment of the "rationalist" mathematician and philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754), from their community in 1723, careful consideration of what Halle Pietists were teaching in their schools suggests a different view. These historical actors reconciled categories of knowledge production and transmission often framed as oppositional—despite what several scholars have recently shown to be their clear interconnectedness.10 I argue here for the predominance of eclecticism in the Schulstadt, including a pronounced emphasis on the "middling" mathematical and mechanical sciences as tools of conciliation and self-improvement. I seek to illustrate how eclecticism was much more than a Philosophiebegriff that was well received by some Pietists, as Walter Sparn has argued, but that it is better understood as a set of conciliatory practices, traces of which resonate in Pietist lesson plans.11 Teachers in Francke's schools integrated experimental philosophy into an educational program that was introducing children to the exercises of...

Social and analytic scaffolding in middle school mathematics: managing the dilemma of telling

The current reform movement in mathematics education urges teachers to support students as they make sense of mathematics, while also ensuring that they gain specific mathematical skills and knowledge. The tension between these two expectations gives rise to what we call the dilemma of telling: how to ensure that students come to certain mathematical understandings, without directly telling them what they need to know or do. Our study focused on how two middle school mathematics teachers who were incorporating many aspects of reform mathematics into their instruction responded to this dilemma. Data sources include classroom observations and videotapes of lessons over a three-year period. We found that both teachers devoted the majority of class time to student conversations, both small group and whole class; however, the teachers strategically entered the student-dominated conversations by “telling” to meet specific curricular goals.

Les savoirs autour de l’Education Nouvelle

New Education is a term which refers to a multitude of educational changes from the end of nineteenth century to date. The different movements in different regions and countries of the world where New Education has arisen and evolved shows this multi‐polarity of New Education. It is based on different “national”, ideological and religious traditions of institutionalisation in the educational field, in different state‐building processes and different religious and confessional embeddings – and therefore also on different concepts of knowledge. Thus, basing learning on knowledge or changing that grounding by redefining education according to concepts of New Education means different things in relation to specific forms of the institutionalisation of knowledge as a social and ideological reference system. In that regard the differences between language‐area or culture‐historical specific forms of New Education, Éducation Nouvelle, Reformpädagogik, Attivismo, etc. could be described as emerging historical figurations of social and cultural factors changing different things in a different way throughout the twentieth century. New Education movements in the first decades of the twentieth century emerged in a small number of countries of the European occident as roughly similar but differently accentuated. Its core elements spread to an ever growing number of countries in all of the other world regions, as part of evolving and changing figurations, yet maintaining a set of similar or even identical principals and orientations. So what could bring out such a difference‐oriented approach of New Education to elaborate and propose a comprehensive representation of educational movements which could be understood and interpreted all over the world as a change of the forms of education in changing societies? In that perspective the following questions will be discussed: (1) Educational reform movements from the end of nineteenth up to the first decades of twentieth century are very different with regard to their scientific and ideological references and their sociopolitical embeddings and outcomes. Is there a common grounding mainstream which could be identified as a unique cause of these movements in the industrialised countries of the old occident? (2) In this case: what are the specific ways these tendencies took to come out in institutional, political and ideological (scientific) changes? Which social and historical conditions of representing changes in a society would interfere in these processes and what is the relation between the specificity of interfering processes and their specific outcomes? What is the role of knowledge in such processes and under such conditions? Different types of New Education suggest different answers concerning the role of knowledge‐concepts in the history of these societies. These differences in knowledge concepts imply – on a secondary level of conceptions – different interpretations of New Education and their institutionalisation. Trying to understand these different relationships implies the danger of misunderstandings and debatable attributions concerning historical educational developments.

How Confident are Students in their Misconceptions about Hypothesis Tests?

Both researchers and teachers of statistics have made considerable efforts during the last decades to re-conceptualize statistics courses in accordance with the general reform movement in mathematics education. However, students still hold misconceptions about statistical inference even after following a reformed course. The study presented in this paper addresses the need to further investigate misconceptions about hypothesis tests by (1) documenting which misconceptions are the most common among university students of introductory courses of statistics, and (2) concentrating on an aspect of research about misconceptions that has not yet received much attention thus far, namely the confidence that students have in their misconceptions. Data from 144 college students were collected by means of a questionnaire addressing the most common misconceptions found in the literature about the definitions of hypothesis test, p-value, and significance level. In this questionnaire, students were asked to select a level of confidence in their responses (from 0 to 10) for each item. A considerable number of participants seemed to hold misconceptions and lower levels of concept-specific self-perceived efficacy were found to be related to misconceptions more than to the correct answers. On average, students selected significantly lower levels of confidence for the question addressing the definition of the significance level than for the other two items. Suggestions for further research and practice that emerge from this study are proposed.

Can You Explain That in Plain English? Making Statistics Group Projects Work in a Multicultural Setting

Students increasingly need to learn to communicate statistical results clearly and effectively, as well as to become competent consumers of statistical information. These two learning goals are particularly important for business students. In line with reform movements in Statistics Education and the GAISE guidelines, we are working to implement teaching strategies and assessment methods that align instruction and assessment with our learning goals. One of the main instructional tools we use is group projects with elements of data collection and analysis, written and oral presentation, and self, peer and professor assessment. This paper addresses specific challenges encountered while teaching and directing group work in a highly multicultural context of 10 to 20 different nationalities in the same classroom. It also focuses on the learning benefits of having students work collaboratively to discuss, write, present, and assess statistics projects in English.

Raising Quality, Fostering “Creativity”: Ideologies and Practices of Education Reform in Beijing

Critics of education in China call for increasing students' “creativity” as key to improving the nation's education. This article examines the idea of children's “creativity” in Beijing, associated with an education reform movement called “Education for Quality.” On the basis of ethnographic research in three elementary schools in Beijing, I argue that efforts to increase students' creativity flounder both on structural impediments within the Chinese educational system and on contradictions inherent within the ideology of children's “quality.” [China, education, quality, ideology]

ICT in Education Reform in Cambodia: Problems, Politics, and Policies Impacting Implementation

This article serves as a critique of an ICT in education reform in the nation of Cambodia. Although an ICT in education policy was adopted by the Cambodian Ministry of Education, tangible, quantifiable, and measured progress of this reform has, to date, been limited in nature. Hence, to understand the limitations of this reform, the author uses Kingdon's multiple streams model to investigate streams of policy, problems, and politics. This model allowed the author to explore existing data, events, and experiences in a robust manner. The current research is an analysis of policy papers, government documents, IGO briefs, personal experiences, and other nations' experiences with similar ICT in education reform movements. It was determined that failure to fully address the political stream has caused stress on the adoption process of this reform and has, in effect, slowed its progress.

Malawi's special needs education (SNE): perspectives and comparisons of practice and progress

The sub‐Saharan country of Malawi is steeped in a robust educational reform movement to ensure ‘Education for All’. Based upon country immersion experience and a review of the literature, this report highlights Malawi's nationwide support for its special needs education (SNE) campaign. First discussed is a brief overview of Malawi, its people and its educational philosophy regarding SNE. Comparisons of sub‐Saharan countries’ educational provisions for students with special learning needs follow, as do explanations of the country's classroom practices and its national SNE Policy (revised in 2007). Described along with ‘best practices’ and the country's history of SNE teacher preparation initiatives is the structure of Malawi's SNE implementation, its design in the classroom, teacher preparation particulars and SNE programme milestones. Partners (organisations), integral to the success of Malawi's SNE efforts, are emphasised; and related policies and provisions are presented, along with closing discussion of assessment, diagnosis, programming, and future implications and conclusions.

Curriculum history, ‘English’ and the New Education; or, installing the empire of English?

The paper takes as its starting point the relationship between the ‘New English’, a curriculum movement commonly associated with the 1960s and 1970s, and the New Education, an influential general educational reform movement of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. It inquires into the discursive‐ideological (dis)continuities between these two moments in educational history, with a view to positing that developments and debates in English teaching always need to be understood historically, within the larger context of the history of education and schooling and the politics of nation and empire. Its immediate reference‐points being Britain and Australia, but with implications more broadly for the curriculum history of post‐Imperial, Anglophone countries more generally as well as the history of educational ideas, the paper seeks to explore why it was that ‘English’ was installed at the heart of the modern(ist) school curriculum.